Friday, March 29, 2024

Following the zigzag path

Avatar photo
Northland Share Farmers of the Year Glen and Trish Rankin have set their goals and will not be dissuaded, they told the well-attended field day on the Moss family’s Hokianga dairy farm.
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Trish left no doubt about their determination.

“We know where we want to be in five years, so help us or get out of the way,” she jokes.

Short-term goals include building equity of more than $500,000, living off $37,000 a year or less, maintaining farm working expenses at $1.50/kg milksolids (MS) and improving pasture utilisation on the kikuyu-dominant farm from 7.5 tonnes/ha drymatter to 10t.

Mid-term goals include million-dollar equity, and a 50:50 sharemilking job plus equity share on a 500-cow farm, or buying a smaller farm of 200 cows.

Longer-term the goal is farm ownership – a goal that never changes even though the pathway might zigzag, Glen says.

From non-farming families and previous careers, the Rankins, now aged 38, came to dairying comparatively late in life.

After 14 years for Glen in herd management and lower-order jobs while Trish continued teaching, raising four boys and rearing calves, they were challenged by the judges in last year’s Dairy Industry Awards to buy cows and get a 50:50 placement, however small and wherever they could.

“Without cow ownership and total immersion we weren’t building equity fast enough to make farm ownership ever,” Trish says.

She quit being deputy principal of Martinborough School and they made the long trek to the Far North.

They found a win-win situation with the Moss family on the 200ha effective farm owned by Africa-resident Kiwi geologist Michael Moss and supervised by his father Chris and step-mother Marion, of Kaeo.

The owners are very keen to work with the Rankins to grow the business, using a completely open plan for development, subject to revisions when the milk price changes.

“Best for everyone to know exactly where each other sits financially and what each party has to lose and gain,” Glen says.

Marion said it was a privilege to be able to support the Rankins in their willingness to try different things. Their passion and drive are awesome, she says.

After three previous entries in the awards as lower-order sharemilkers, and two third placings, the Rankins won in their first season of three under contract up north.

Their plans and presentations were excellent, along with their attention to detail, the judges said.

In winning the Westpac Business Performance Award they tabled multiple pathways to achieve their goals, supported by thorough analysis of historical performance and discussions with the owners, their consultants and DairyBase.

They are both full-time farmers, with no staff, and Trish does some relief teaching as well.

The farm has only 10% flats (three paddocks) with the rest rolling to hilly, on both sides of Mangamuka Road near the Hokianga Harbour.

The new hazard map shows numerous creeks or swamps, tomos, and steep tracks with vehicle limitations.

When Trish is milking she works to a plan prepared by Glen for motorbike routes and cow movements, trying to keep to the more accessible paddocks.

Both they and the boys carry radios and fortunately the farm has reasonable mobile phone coverage.

The hazard map, besides being a necessity for farm safety reasons, was one of a large number of plans, reports, and policies the Rankins put together in a hurry because of the contest.

“We recommend the awards to everyone because there was no way we would have written all those papers if the contest wasn’t looming,” Trish says.

“We also entered in Northland to meet people, because we are new here and nobody knows us.”

Trish cut down the 80-page Powerpoint presentation given to judges for the field day audience on stools in a hay barn. But she made good use of laminated 220 pages, pinning them to noticeboards in the barn and on the sides of a calf trailer.

Glen said the calf trailer was mainly for off-farm use because he made sure cows calved close to home on flatter paddocks or even on farm races when spring rains came.

That was because tractor, trailer and even motorbike access was impossible to most paddocks with saturated soils.

Fortunately the farm has a quarry for raceway rock.

An ambitious programme of re-seeding Italian, fescue, and annual ryegrasses into mulched kikuyu has begun over 80ha, along with 10ha of kale for winter feed and 2-3ha of rape for young stock.

Even in a poor payout year, they intend to improve the breeding of the composite herd of predominately Jersey, weighted towards heifers, and leased Friesians.

Mating management is six weeks of AI using Alpha sires over owned cows, dependable bulls over leased cows and Hereford over non-breeding animals, followed by six weeks run with Angus bulls, three weeks either side of a week of AI with short-gestation semen.

The six-week in-calf rate was only 49%, so firm emphasis must be placed on improvement.

The empty rate was 14% for the mixed-age cows and 1% for the R2s.

All young stock are grown on the farm, with weighing done to ensure they grow to their full potential.

The farm runs 77 R1 heifers and 72 R2s.

The effluent system is four ponds with 90 days of storage and consent to discharge.

The Rankins use a slurry tanker to avoid the need to discharge and make the most of effluent nutrients in cropping.

Once-a-day milking for the full lactation suits labour requirements and the layout and topography of the farm, because cows might have to walk one kilometre up and down quite steep races.

Kikuyu and crop growth has been very good during the summer because of regular falls of rain so topping, mechanical mulching and hoof-and-tooth mulching have been and will continue to be necessary.

That excess kikuyu growth must be contained if the Rankins are not to have a repeat of last winter, when six quick frosts killed the kikuyu and left them with inedible thatch and not enough ryegrass coming through – hence the oversowing.

Their final words of wisdom for the audience were that sharemilkers could get ahead even with bad payouts, by controlling farm and personal costs, rearing calves, buying cows wisely and moving to less-expensive districts.

Runners-up were Damian and Rochelle Dixon of Ruakaka.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading